


the river and the rock

by nightdotlight



Series: Jedi June 2020 [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Gen, Metaphors, Teaching, the au where anakin is luminara’s padawan and it saves the galaxy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:40:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24720964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightdotlight/pseuds/nightdotlight
Summary: Lightsabers clash, and Luminara Unduli holds her ground.She doesn’t move, doesn’t lock her muscles, just makes herself an immovable object and lets her opponent strain against the lock.
Relationships: Anakin Skywalker & Luminara Unduli
Series: Jedi June 2020 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1776460
Comments: 7
Kudos: 95





	the river and the rock

**Author's Note:**

> day three: teaching / learning

Green against green. 

Lightsabers clash, and Luminara Unduli holds her ground.

She doesn’t move, doesn’t lock her muscles, just makes herself an immovable object and lets her opponent strain against the lock.

“Padawan,” she says. Her voice is level, cutting through the heat and smell of ozone colouring the air of the training salle. “You’re tiring.”

“I know,” Anakin Skywalker grits out, and pushes harder. His slowly-developing muscles bunch and tense beneath his loose linen shirt, already beginning to tighten at his shoulders and biceps.

Luminara stands there, a ballast in the Force, and lets him do the work for her. When he tires, his hands sweaty and rubbed raw from the bite of the metal hilt, his effort dwindles for just half a second.

That instant is all it takes. Saber flashing upwards in a decoy movement, she ducks below Anakin’s guard and sweeps his feet from under him in a smooth and nearly dance-like movement.

He hits the mat with a soft ‘oof’ before huffing a groan. “You didn’t get tired at all! How come you were so strong?” His voice is a mixture of whining and genuine curiosity about how she overpowered him.

Luminara considers hiding her amused smile for only a brief moment before allowing it to cross her face. Thinks about how to phrase it, just for a second, and—

“When you were trying to break the lock, Padawan,” she says, “what were you doing?”

There’s a little crinkle in his brow between his eyebrows. It’s a tell that Luminara has become well-accustomed to noticing, betraying his confusion, and this time she does smother her smile. He’s eleven, after all, and as volatile as humans of that age tend to be, no matter how much he may respect her— and he does respect her. But he likely wouldn’t take kindly to her laughing at him.

“I was trying to break the saber lock?” he says, and it’s really more of a question. The crinkle deepens, and if Luminara ever claimed to be immune to the effect of younglings on all Jedi, it’s safe to say she was lying, because she has to restrain herself from cooing at the sight.

“Yes,” she says, and gives him the same calm smile she gave him so many times over the year she defended him. He relaxes visibly at the sight, and she continues, “your mind was trying to break the saber lock. But what was your body doing? What did your mind tell it to do?”

Anakin hums, thoughtful, before lapsing back into silence. Luminara lets him, and falls into a light meditation herself to pass the time, settling on her knees with her feet tucked under her. It takes only a few minutes for him to speak again.

“Miss Luminara,” he says. He never did quite break the habit of talking to her as he did undercover. “I think I have the answer.”

“Very well, Padawan,” she replies, “what are your thoughts?”

For all his deviances from the usual behaviour of a young Jedi, mostly brought about by his... fraught, she could say, life growing up outside the temple, Luminara has never found it truly difficult to connect with Anakin. In light of that, she finds instructing him a rewarding task, and the difficulties that so many Jedi have observed seem to melt away in light of that. Not to say it’s never hard, but—

Alone together for a year in Wild Space, and despite their differences, Anakin’s temper and Luminara’s calm stillness, they made a connection.

To that end, she feels it’s her responsibility to help him acclimate back to Temple life. Finds it enjoyable, too, and—

Well. In light of that, though it goes against convention, she found herself a Padawan in the boy who defended her from raiders in the sands of Tatooine.

Anakin sits up straighter, clears his throat. It’s a tic he’s picked up from Quinlan’s student Aayla, the beginning of his thought process.

“When I was trying to break the lock,” he begins, eyes thoughtful, “like you said, my mind was trying to break the lock, and that’s where I was fixed. But my body,” he says, “my body was focused on pushing against your lightsaber, in order to achieve that.”

Luminara smiles. “Very good, Padawan. Your body was focused on pushing your saber against mine, so you tired quickly, and that’s why you eventually faltered.”

“Then how did you not get tired?” He asks, “no matter how hard I pushed, I couldn’t move you, but you didn’t get tired at all— and Mirialans aren’t that much stronger than humans.”

She hums. Considers, and— the Jedi tend to teach their young to piece solutions together from what they already know, rather than just providing an outright answer.

Anakin, as if sensing the slant of her thoughts, adopts a look of exaggerated consternation. “Miss Luminara, please just tell me—“

“Padawan,” Luminara says, and she doesn’t bother to hide her smile at all. Not all teaching must be devoid of fun, after all, and her own method of teaching-via-metaphor never fails to irritate Anakin— and by extension, amuse her.

“Think of a river with a fast-flowing current,” she says, and chooses to ignore her Padawan’s exaggerated eye roll. He settles, though; nods, and she continues.

“The river flows constantly, pushes constantly. It is an unstoppable force. But,” Luminara holds up a finger, “at the centre of the river, the current finds itself blocked by a rock jutting out of the water. No matter how fast the water flows, how high the river rises, the rock remains where it is, immovable.”

“So,” Anakin sends her a cheeky smile, and it could be the Force, could just be Luminara’s good sense, but she knows to dread what he’ll say next, “an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?”

A better joke than expected, at least. She pretends to roll her eyes in exasperation before fixing her gaze on him. “Perhaps, Padawan, but that is not the point.”

“I don’t suppose it’s worth asking you what the point is?” At her flat look, Anakin sighs— “Thought so,” and looks towards his clasped hands in thought.

Luminara leaves him to it. If he’s genuinely stuck, he knows that she’ll help him. Until then, the answer is present: he just needs to find it.

Eventually, a subconscious jolt of realisation from Anakin’s end of the bond reaches her, and she looks up from her own meditation to meet his elated expression. Quirks her eyebrow, and he grins, opens his mouth.

“When we fought— no,” he says, “every time we fight, we take the positions of river and stone. I am the river,” he gestures at himself, then at Luminara, “and you are the stone. You made yourself immovable, and no matter how I pushed, I wasn’t able to force you backwards—“

“— because no matter how the river pushes, no matter its strength, it cannot move the stone,” Luminara smiles at her Padawan openly, now, and she can’t smother the flicker of something bright and happy unfurling in her chest when he beams back.

“So I should try to be the stone,” Anakin surmises. “I shouldn’t push. I just plant my feet.”

“More than that,” she says. “The Force has currents all of its own, and as Jedi we usually allow them to move through and around us. The second part is the foundation of this technique. You believe—“ she rises to her feet and lifts her arms as if holding a saber in a lock— “that you are immovable. The Force moves through you, and it makes you so. Fixes you in place, so that no matter how the river rages, it will never force you back a step.”

“How do I do that, Miss Luminara?” Anakin asks, and his curiosity is palpable.

Luminara lifts the corner of her mouth. “Practice,” she says, and covers her mouth to hide her laugh at her Padawan’s groan before holding out a hand to help him to his feet. “Again?”

It’s later— much later, when the sun’s last dregs of gold are fading from the horizon, that Anakin sits down next to Luminara on the meditation mat in their quarters.

“Miss Luminara,” he says, “earlier. The lesson you taught me...”

She opens one eye to look at his face, pensive and shadowed by twilight. “Yes, Anakin?”

“It was about the Dark Side, wasn’t it?” He asks, voice slow and certain. “As Jedi, our existence is a daily struggle against the Dark, just like how we fought earlier. But if we fight by pushing against it constantly, like how I was trying to break the saber lock, we become tired. We burn out, our morals become fatigued and atrophy, and we Fall. Which is why instead of fighting the Dark Side like that, and exhausting ourselves like the river, the Jedi Order is the rock. We are immovable in our morality.”

“We take a stand against the Darkness, and refuse to move no matter the cost,” Luminara whispers the last part along with Anakin. Her words, from the beginning of that awful year, and—

He hadn’t quite understood, back then. Had wanted to, but there had been a gap in his knowledge, where he’d needed to puzzle out the lesson in his own words.

It seems he has.

Her Padawan is growing up, it seems.

“Actually,” she says, “that wasn’t the point of the lesson. But,” she continues at his look of almost-alarm, “you’re right, Anakin.”

His cautious, elated smile is a thing of beauty in the twilight, and Luminara isn’t naturally tactile, but she still lays a hand on his shoulder. She can’t help the smile when he leans into the contact, either, and grasps his hand in her free one, squeezing it in reassurance.

“One of the hardest parts of teaching,” she says, “is to understand where your Padawan can be told the answer to a question, and where they must learn for themselves.”

Anakin nods; acknowledging, but waiting for the rest of the thought.

“One of the hardest parts of learning, however, is to find lessons that are not given to you by your teachers, and to understand what those lessons mean. I intended to teach you how to hold a saber lock, and I did. You, however,” and Luminara motions to her Padawan, “took what I taught you, and from that you learnt what it means for you to stand against the Dark Side. You taught yourself what it means for you, specifically, to be a Jedi.” Luminara pauses. Looks at Anakin, and then says, “I am very proud of you.”

He hugs her then, and Luminara has never been a tactile person. But she wraps her arms around her Padawan and holds tight.

He will make a fantastic Knight.

**Author's Note:**

> set in the au where qui-gon jinn and the queen of naboo crashed on ryloth, not tatooine. 
> 
> anakin skywalker was discovered a year later by luminara unduli, and her influence earlier in his life helps a lot.


End file.
